From: [e--ot--i] at [merle.acns.nwu.edu] (Edward Zotti)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.cecil-adams,sci.med
Subject: Smoking deaths among WW2 vets: request for comments
Date: 4 Jun 94 03:42:25 GMT

The following contains some possibly dubious statistical conclusions. Comments
appreciated. For a newspaper column.

Straight Dope 6-10-94
Copyright 1994 Chicago Reader

     The 50th anniversary of D-Day leads me to ask a timely
question. Many American men began smoking while serving in
the armed forces in WWII. The Red Cross even distributed free
cigarettes to the troops. Most of these men became addicted to
cigarettes, smoked throughout their lives, and now many have
died of smoking-related illnesses. I wonder if more men have
died from smoking connected with their WWII service than died
as battle casualties in that war? --Bill Phillips, Seattle,
Washington
     Cecil originally had the idea he could turn up the answer
to this excellent question with five minutes of rummaging in the
Straight Dope archives, thereby enabling him to achieve one of
his life's dreams: a timely question that actually got a timely
response. When I got to the vault, however, I discovered that
the carpenter ants had made mincemeat of the papyrus. Not a
problem, I blithely thought. I'll merely tap into the nation's vast
biomedical data apparatus, which consisted of calling everybody
I could think of that would possibly know about this. Just to
impress you with the thoroughness with which we at the Straight
Dope pursue these things, I will tell you that I called the
National Cancer Institute, the American Lung Association, the
National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the Veterans
Administration, the American Cancer Society, the Center for
Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, the
National Center for Health Statistics, the Metropolitan Life
Insurance Company, and the federal Office of Smoking and
Health. Result: nothing, although if I were younger and lived in
the 404 area code I might have asked the woman at the OSH
for a date. One researcher I spoke to did venture that smoking-
related deaths among WWII vets could probably be computed,
but it would take six months. Plenty fast if you're funded by the
government, I thought, but I'm on deadline.
     I retired to the library to see what I could scare up with
a little common sense and the World Almanac, supplemented
as necessary by the medical journals. I learned that 14.9 million
people served in the U.S. armed services during WWII. I then
made some simplifying assumptions: (a) all 14.9 million were
male, and (b) they were statistically reflective of U.S. men as a
whole, meaning that half smoked (as of 1965, anyway) and the
typical smoker had 20 or fewer cigarettes a day. I then applied
an estimate from an article entitled "What Are the Odds That
Smoking Will Kill You?" (Mattson et al, American Journal of
Public Health, April 1987): at age 35, the chances of a
moderate smoker (fewer than 25 cigarettes a day) dying of a
smoking-related disease by age 65 are 8.7 percent. The youngest
WWII vets today are past retirement age, so if Mattson and
friends are right, smoking to date has killed at least 648,000.
Total U.S. battle deaths during WWII: 292,131.
     You realize that from the standpoint of statistical
reliability, the preceding is about one jump ahead of a Ouija
board. On closer analysis, which I fully expect some nitpicker to
provide, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that I was off by a
factor of 2 in either direction. Also, my assumption that vets
were statistically indistinguishable from U.S. men as a whole
makes hash out of your premise, namely that WWII service per
se was the main thing that got many guys smoking. (For what
it's worth, the war definitely boosted national smoking overall--
per capita cigarette consumption rose faster during the early
1940s than at any time before or since.) The war certainly killed
people faster than cigarettes. But you can make the argument
that in the interest of keeping down the body count long term
maybe we should have heavied up on the Doublemint and nixed
the Lucky Strike. 
                                           --CECIL ADAMS